


Waiting for Malta

by squirtturtle665



Series: Inception Bingo 2019 [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Doppelganger, Drunk Eames, Fluff, Inception Bingo, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Break Up, drunk voicemails, eames has a things for arthur's eyebrows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 21:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19858624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirtturtle665/pseuds/squirtturtle665
Summary: A series of drunk voicemails and the aftermath.





	Waiting for Malta

_“Hi, Arthur, it’s me. I’m back home. Well not_ home _home, you know. I’m at my flat. Um, don’t really know why I’m calling you, guess I’m just used to doing it after a trip. Anyway, uh, hope you’re okay. Love you.”_

-

_“I didn’t really mean what I said in the last voicemail. It just slipped out. Habit... Fuck, who am I kidding, yes, I did mean it. Right, I’m going to go get drunk now.”_

-

_“I’m drunk, and I miss you. Call me back.”_

-

_“You and your stupid sleep schedule. Always had to get your perfect eight hours, didn’t you? Perfect eight hours, perfect hair, perfect suits, perfect posture, perfect body, perfect, perfect, perfect. Couldn’t handle it when someone wasn’t as perfect as you. No one ever was.”_

-

_“They all look like you, all of them. You follow me wherever I go. I can’t fucking get rid of you. I fucked a man last night who looked just like you. He was you. Got a bit awkward when I moaned your name instead of his. I don’t even remember his name. Lucas? No, that can’t be it. Ronald? God no, I have standards. I suppose it doesn’t even matter anymore. What matters is that he wasn’t you. He looked like you, but he didn’t taste like you. Maybe he didn’t even really look like you. His eyebrows were all wrong. How do you get your eyebrows to be just like that, Arthur? Doesn’t make any logical sense. Never really noticed how much I love your eyebrows until I didn’t get to see them every day. I’m drunk and rambling and when you get all these messages, you’re going to think something is wrong, but nothing is wrong, and also everything is wrong because you’re not here because you left. It’s all wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…”_

-

_“Arthur. Darling. Come back to me. Please.”_

-

Eames wakes up with the sun beaming through his windows and a horrible pain in his head. He doesn’t even try to sit up, just stares up at the ceiling.

“Good morning, beautiful,” comes a voice from the foot of his bed.

In Eames’ half-asleep, maybe still half-drunk, stupor, he responds, “Morning,” with a stupid smile on his face.

“I was talking to Lucy,” the voice says.

This knocks Eames awake and he sits up all too quickly, groaning and holding his head as he finally puts a face to the faceless voice. Arthur. It’s Arthur at the end of his bed, softly petting the head of Eames’ cat, Lucy. Eames feels that he should be more surprised than he actually is.

“Did you break into my flat?” he asks.

Arthur shrugs. “Your door was unlocked. You’re an irresponsible drunk as well as a babbling one.”

At first, Eames has no idea what Arthur is talking about, but then his headache reminds him of lots of alcohol and lots of phone calls.

“Oh Christ, what did I say?”

Lucky for Eames, Arthur has saved all of the voicemails from last night and plays them for him one by one. Lucy runs out of the room after the second one. By the last one, Eames is smashing his face into his pillow over and over again. It has been two months since he and Arthur broke up, and Eames still can’t get over him enough to not drunk call him. To be fair, Arthur was the one who broke up with Eames, but Eames still thinks he should be able to trust himself with alcohol by this point.

Eames doesn’t even really know if it was a real break up. Arthur said he needed space, but Arthur has always been shit at communicating what he actually wants, so Eames assumed he meant that he needed permanent space.

“So you fucked someone,” Arthur starts, “who looked like me, but then you realized he didn’t look like me because of his eyebrows? Am I getting that right?”

Eames groans. “You’re the worst.”

“You’re pathetic,” Arthur says, with a hint of humor in his voice.

“I’m aware, darling, thank you,” Eames mumbles into his pillow. Lifting his head up is hard work, but he does it anyway. “You came all this way just to force me to listen to those?” 

Eames has to ignore the pang of longing in his chest, has to restrain himself from reaching out to touch Arthur. To have him so close after such a long two months is excruciating.

Arthur shakes his head. “No, I was always planning on coming here, drunk voicemails or not. We have a job.”

“You can’t just sign me up for a job without telling me anymore.”

“Well, I did. It’s an important one, and I think you’re going to want to be on it.”

“Where?”

“Malta.”

Memories of sunrises and sunsets spent nakedly wrapped up with Arthur flood Eames’ mind. Malta is where they fell in love, where everything changed overnight. Malta is where they never left each other’s side, where Eames couldn’t imagine himself spending another second next to someone else.

He can’t go back to Malta. Not now, not after everything. It would hurt too much to be with Arthur in that place without actually _being_ with him.

“Arthur…”

“Eames.”

“What’s so important about it?” Eames asks only to humor Arthur.

“It’s a two-man job.”

“That might be the most ridiculous thing to come out of your mouth,” Eames says. “You’re the best point man in the business and an all-around genius, but there’s no way you and I can pull off a job alone.”

Arthur smiles and climbs up on the bed. His face is close to Eames’, and Eames is completely frozen. Why does Arthur look like a kid in a candy shop, and why can’t Eames stop staring at him?

“I’m going to assume you’re being slow this morning because you’re hungover, so let me spell it out for you. I miss you and I love you and I want to spend the next few weeks figuring things out with you in Malta.”

Eames surges forward and kisses Arthur fiercely and frantically. He can’t believe this is happening. There are things they need to work on, of course. Arthur needs to communicate better, and Eames needs to stop assuming things, but those things can wait for now. They can wait for Malta. Right now, Eames is focused on kissing Arthur for the first time in two months. He didn’t imagine it would happen quite like this, with him feeling halfway on his way to death and Arthur breaking into his apartment, but he’ll take it.

Arthur is the first one to pull away. “Really, Eames? Tequila?” he asks, laughing.

“It was a rough night.” He leans forward and presses one more kiss to Arthur’s lips. "Darling, I'm happy you're here, but I have many, many questions and many more concerns."

"I know, and you'll get many answers and many explanations, I promise," Arthur says. "But let me do it in Malta, where I fell in love with you the first time."

Arthur is rarely a sap, but when he is, he means what he says, and Eames has a hard time refusing Arthur when he's being like this. He loves him and he can't control it, even though he wants nothing more than to be angry with Arthur right now. Instead, he's going to let Arthur whisk him away to a beautiful island and woo him into getting back together with him. It's going to be beautiful.

Eames smiles, settling in on his decision. “Only you would describe fixing a relationship as a job.”

“So is that a yes? You’ll come to Malta? You’ll forgive me for thinking I could live my life without you?”

Eames sighs happily. “There’s nothing to forgive. You had a slight lapse of judgment and forgot how amazing I am.” Arthur hits Eames in the chest and he laughs. “Yes, it’s a yes. I’ll go anywhere with you and your stupidly perfect eyebrows.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Inceptiversary! I realize there's not much context here, so do we want a part two with our boys in Malta? Or a part negative one of their break up? Let me know! Thanks for reading!


End file.
